Gently With the Painters

by Alan Hunter

  A cup of tea stood on the cabinet from which he had unlatched the phone, the sun was streaming through the window and the traffic was busy below. From next door, where there was a bathroom, he could hear the comfortable sound of a filling bath; in his imagination he could see the water descending and savour the voluptuous fragrance of bath salts and steam.

  ‘I’m sorry if I got you up …’

  ‘My dear fellow, don’t waste apologies. Though at this hour in the morning – you remember what Caruso said about it? “Madam, I can’t spit …!” Well, it’s like that with me: I need at least a pint of coffee to turn me into a human being.’

  ‘I’d like to see you later this morning, sir.’

  ‘Then you’ll have to come along to my studio, Gently. I’m a professional, you know, not a mewling amateur – I stand to my easel between ten and one.’

  Gently chuckled to himself. How the phrase suited Mallows! One could visualize his stocky figure planted, fencer-like, before a canvas. Off-hand he couldn’t remember ever having seen a small Mallows picture; they were created for noble rooms and for great carved and gilded frames.

  ‘I’ll be along at about eleven if I’m not held up.’

  ‘Good. Will you be on duty, or could you stand a drop of sherry?’

  ‘I’ll be on duty …’

  ‘Never mind. I promise not to tell a soul. And I suppose it’s no use asking what you’re digging after now?’

  Gently hung up, still chuckling. One couldn’t help being taken with Mallows. Mirrored in him, one could perceive a long line of master painters. They were professionals and proud of it! They had no time for self-centred aesthetes. They were the strong, the prolific creators, on whose brushes few doubts ever sat, and they produced those arsenals of work from which the small men and critics dissented.

  He had the papers on his breakfast table and found that the Johnson case was overshadowed. The Yard had made their concerted sweep on the information of Herbie the Fence, and at last they had got their hands on Jimmy Fisher’s executioner.

  * * *

  SCOTLAND YARD STRIKES – SLAYER OF GANGSTER ARRESTED

  38 Arrests in Mammoth East End Swoop

  Warehouse battle – Constable shot.

  In a series of raids carried out last night, Scotland Yard and the Metropolitan Police virtually wiped out the rival gangs of East End warehouse bandits. Acting on a tip-off, they surrounded a warehouse in Poplar. At the same time swoops were made on premises in Stepney, Wapping and Whitechapel.

  At Poplar, where a gun battle developed, a constable was shot and seriously wounded. The gunman was later arrested with five members of his gang. They are expected to be able to assist the police in their inquiries into the killing of the notorious Jimmy Fisher …

  The Scotland Yard officer in charge of the operation was Superintendent Pagram, of Homicide. Superintendent Gently was also working on the case, but left it yesterday to take charge of the Shirley Johnson murder.

  The raids came as the culmination of long weeks of arduous routine work …

  Gently wrinkled his nose and passed the paper across to Stephens. So they had finally done it: they had laid Jimmy Fisher’s ghost. There was, naturally, a good bit of ‘arduous routine’ still to be undertaken, but now it was coasting home on a downhill gradient; while, if they had recovered the gun, even that might be abbreviated.

  ‘I’m glad they got around to mentioning your name, sir.’

  Secretly, so was Gently; after all, he had earned it! And from the way it was put … if you read between the lines … All in all, he finished his breakfast in a mood of quiet complacence.

  At Headquarters he had to confer with Hansom and Superintendent Walker, two gentlemen who were bound to be critical of the way he had treated Johnson. Unlike Stephens, however, they had precedents to go on, and they warily refrained from open disagreement with Gently.

  ‘It turns out, then, that Johnson has got a rip-snorting motive?’

  Hansom couldn’t help dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s.

  ‘You could pull him in at any time, and make a charge stick?’

  ‘At any time I feel that I’m one hundred per cent sure of him …’

  He left them in the Super’s office to talk over his sins, Stephens, in the meantime, having fetched Dolly to make her statement. It amused him to watch Stephens’s reactions to the attractive barmaid; aware of his susceptibility, the Inspector became extremely punctilious.

  ‘You appreciate that we have to put it in statement form, miss …’

  ‘If you’ll be good enough to read it through, miss …’

  ‘Yes, miss. Sign it there …’

  In the end it was doubtful who was most impressed by the other – Dolly, it was certain, had an eye for Stephens’s good looks. He saw her out through the foyer and they parted in mutual embarrassment. Coming back, he sat thoughtfully silent while his senior brooded over the statement.

  ‘What do you think about Aymas calling Mrs Johnson a liar?’

  ‘Aymas—?’

  ‘Previous to that, they’d been so friendly together.’

  Stephens frowned and twisted his fingers. ‘She might have been kidding him about his pictures.’

  ‘“Liar” was a strong term to use.’

  ‘Well … about another bloke, then.’

  There could be no question that they needed to know more about the meeting. It was the thought on which Gently had slept, and which had occasioned his call to Mallows. If you were going to mark time on Johnson, then the meeting became your first object; it was from there that Shirley Johnson had walked to her death, with the accusation of ‘liar!’ still echoing in her ears. And, out of all those that had been present, it was her accuser who most caught the eye.

  ‘It’s a pity that we didn’t get something positive from the breakers …’

  He had seen the report of the detective who had been engaged in the search. The wheels, engine and body of Aymas’s car had been identified, but the body had been gutted and crushed in a press. The mats and linings had in any case been destroyed in an incinerator, while the seats and their cushions had been lost among a thousand others. Short of testing the whole pile there was nothing to be done, and even if blood reactions had been found, they could not be tied to Aymas’s car.

  If Aymas had had something to hide, then he had hidden it with outstanding efficiency.

  Butters’s Rolls slid up to HQ at a few minutes before ten o’clock. Butters, in honour of the occasion, wore a black jacket over pinstripe trousers. His buttonhole, almost inevitably, was a large white carnation, and on his head he wore a bowler and on his hands pigskin gloves. His daughter, looking dark-eyed, had also been produced in black; she wore a tailored two-piece suit but its lapel was innocent of flowers.

  ‘As you see, we’ve come along, sir … expect you need my statement too.’

  He had been drinking already that morning: you could smell it two paces off.

  Gently handed Butters to Stephens, wanting the daughter on his own; but if he had been expecting her to talk more freely he was in for a disappointment. Her mood had changed from that of last night’s. The hysterical undertone had been repressed. Now she was very much what she looked, the well-bred offspring of a ‘county’ family. She sat stiffly upright on the office chair, and neatly folded her hands on her lap.

  ‘Just some questions to start with, Miss Butters …’

  Gently was consciously using his ‘paternal’ manner. Instead of facing her across Hansom’s desk, he had perched informally on a corner of it.

  ‘I’ve been talking to your fiancé …’

  Again, he deliberately chose this term.

  ‘He confirms what you were telling me, especially in relation to Monday night …’

  But he might as well have saved his guile, because Miss Butters was not to be loosened. She had taken her second wind, as it were, and she was painfully on her guard. Her statement was carefully brief. It was a model of cautious admission.
She answered his questions with unresponsive brevity and refused to be cajoled into voluntary additions.

  Had she been on the phone to Johnson? Gently knew that he had spent the night at his flat.

  ‘What happened on the Sunday evening?’

  ‘Derek drove us to the cottage. During the afternoon we’d been sailing, and Derek had his tea with us. We said we were going for a spin to the coast.’

  ‘What time did you return to Lordham?’

  ‘At ten p.m.’

  ‘Did Derek go in with you?’

  ‘Yes. He had a drink with father.’

  ‘Was his wife mentioned that day?’

  ‘No, she wasn’t mentioned.’

  ‘On the Monday, what did you talk about?’

  ‘About the business, about Thrin Mouth regatta.’

  And so it had gone on, from start to finish; you could almost hear the thud as the questions were dead-batted.

  ‘By the way! Touching your phone conversation with Johnson last night …’

  ‘There wasn’t a conversation. I haven’t spoken to him since Monday.’

  But at last, after the statement was typed out and signed, a small flicker of emotion did break through the act:

  ‘Is he – is Mr Johnson at the police station now?’

  Gently mimicked her flat responses:

  ‘No. He isn’t here …’

  Butters was able to confirm that his daughter hadn’t used the telephone – after Gently left there had been a row, and then Butters had locked her in her room. His wife, he admitted, had taken the daughter’s part, and on the morrow, which was Sunday, there was a family conference in prospect.

  The poor fellow had a stricken look, and perhaps wasn’t far from tears.

  The hour was closer to twelve than eleven when Gently fetched his Riley from the garage, having previously had a chat with the detective who had done the night shift on Johnson. Stephens, invited to go along, preferred to attend to another angle: he wanted to beat round the car-park area in the hope of flushing a reluctant eyewitness.

  ‘We caught the chummie just like that on the Kenwood case, sir. There was a type who saw the job done, but the locals hadn’t got on to him.’

  ‘That was a case in a thousand, Stephens.’

  ‘All the same, sir … I’d like to have a shot.’

  So Gently had left him to it, and set out to see Mallows alone.

  Mallows lived in Oldmarket Road, which was the handsome south-west approach to the city; he also had a Regency house but in the more elaborate, urban style. It stood a good way back from the road and was largely screened by a plantation of beeches. Around this went a double carriage-sweep, its terminals guarded by fine stone gateways. The house itself was faced with plaster. It was designed to give a monumental effect. The lofty centre section was supported by a pair of recessed ones, and in the angles between them nestled two single-storey units. The whole was decorated with moulded plaster, with shallow apses, urns and friezes, and it displayed with the greatest virtuosity the period penchant for wrought-iron ornament.

  A small, elderly man answered Gently’s ring, and the detective was ushered up a narrow but gracefully swept stairway. From the landing some plainer stairs departed to the second floor and it was here that, by joining three rooms, the artist had contrived his studio.

  ‘You’re late, Superintendent … who’s been going through the mill?’

  Mallows had come to the doorway to greet him, his palette and brush still held in his hands. He wore the conventional artist’s smock with a beret to contain his rebellious hair. The former, though stained and stiffened with paint, gave the artist an ecclesiastical air.

  ‘Bring us a bottle of sherry, Withers – drop of the ’16, I should think. It wouldn’t do to offer common stuff to a man like the Superintendent. Oh, and what about stopping to lunch? We’ve got some fried chicken, with a flan to follow … Withers, you’d better inform Mrs Clingoe: the Superintendent will be staying for lunch.’

  As a matter of fact Gently hadn’t assented, but then, he hadn’t been consulted either. The matter was disposed of as though it scarcely bore noticing – Mallows wasn’t going to bother him to make up his mind on such a trifle.

  ‘Come into the workshop – I’ve got some things I want to show you.’

  Gently followed him into the studio, which smelt strongly of turpentine. Surprisingly the place was cool, though lying directly under the roofs; a row of windows, facing north, were swung horizontally in their frames. Along the inner wall ran a line of racks, most of which were stuffed with canvases. Some other racks, considerably larger, filled one end of the studio from floor to ceiling. Under the windows had been built a bench, and this was equipped with a tool or two; beneath it were drawers, some long and shallow, and there was a complicated stand which took up a lot of the floor space.

  It was a friendly, informal and yet efficient place, harbouring none of the mess and clutter often to be found in artists’ studios. The canvas on the stand was a large, unfinished seascape and it depicted a number of yachts at the beginning of a race.

  ‘Are you a sailing man, Gently? Those are East Coast One-Designs. It’s the start of the Harwich to Ostend race – a friend of mine called Jenkins won it.’

  ‘You are painting this for him?’

  ‘Good heavens no! He couldn’t afford it. But he saw that I got the commission, so I’m going to do him a little something. By the way, would you like a portrait?’

  ‘No thanks. I couldn’t afford it, either.’

  ‘Not for cash, you silly fellow! I’ll knock you one off for a souvenir …’

  He got rid of his palette and brush and wiped his hands on a scrap of stockinet. Then, picking up a pad and some charcoal, he began to sketch with firm, bold strokes.

  ‘You’ve got a face that asks to be painted … good frontal development … ocular benevolence. You’re a fraud as a detective, you know … mouth gives you away, and so does your nose. How in the world did you come to take it up?’

  Gently shrugged. How did he, if it came to that?

  ‘You might have made a judge, or a priest or something. But not a detective – it’s a sheer waste of human material. Just look at that mouth, and the set of the brows! A doctor, even … but not a policeman.’

  The topic was making Gently feel uneasy, so that he was glad when Withers interrupted them with the sherry. About Mallows there was a fearless and unceasing penetration; both his brain and his pencil had a scalpel-like sharpness.

  ‘You like a dry sherry, do you?’

  ‘Yes … I prefer it dry.’

  ‘Good, because I don’t carry much of the other. But this is a Vino del Pasto, Domecq, ’16 – that was the best year for sherry since … oh, ’82.’

  Unquestionably they were drinking a fine and delicate sherry. Gently leant against the bench and sniffed and sipped it with appreciation. Mallows, squatting on a window sill, watched him over considered mouthfuls, and every now and then an elvish twinkle came into his eye.

  ‘So you’ve come back to me, then!’ He was forcing Gently to meet his eye. ‘You’ve taken a sniff at Mr Johnson, and you think that hewon’t do. Personally speaking, I think you’re right … as you may know, I’ve done business with him. He, too, has a mouth with a story … then there’s his nose: that isn’t quite a failure. Yes … I think you’re quite right … you mustn’t let Johnson bias your viewpoint.’

  ‘Why do you say: “So you’ve come back to me”?’

  ‘My dear fellow!’ Mallows lofted a shaggy eyebrow at him. ‘In the first place the Palette Group enjoys level pegging with Johnson, and in the second, I was the last person to see Shirley alive. Have a little more sherry – the second glass is often the best.’

  Gently grunted but permitted his glass to be taken. It was a sherry he would have drunk with the devil himself. Again the two of them sat silently drinking, Gently by the bench and Mallows in the window.

  ‘Let me guess, if I can, a few of the things yo
u want to ask me. From the beginning I’ve tried to look at this affair as you would …’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be easier if I asked them?’

  ‘Don’t spoil the fun, you moron! Let’s reverse the roles for the moment – I’m the detective, and you’re the suspect.’

  ‘All right … if it amuses you.’

  ‘Drink your sherry and listen to me.

  ‘To begin with, have you ever been to bed with Shirley Johnson?’

  ‘What does the suspect reply?’

  ‘Remember! You’re being me.’

  ‘Very well. I think I may have been, but I’d better be quiet about it.’

  ‘That’s good – very good. It’s what I expected all along. Now, your wanting to be quiet about it opens up some possibilities. If I think that she’s been your mistress, then I think I can see a motive. She’s been threatening you, hasn’t she – threatening to shop you to her husband?’

  ‘I wouldn’t go as far—’

  ‘Wait a moment – here’s something better!

  ‘Suppose – just only suppose – that you were infatuated with Shirley Johnson. Now it’s not enough to go to bed with her – she must be solely, wholly your own. She has become a symbol to you, the fiery cross of a desperate faith: she will, you think, transform your existence, she will give a substance to your dreams—’

  ‘Now you’re laying it on too thick!’

  ‘Drink your sherry – I say, just suppose. We can suppose a thousand things to see if they fit the given facts. Of course, I’m not going to claim that Shirley could inspire Olympian passions – she wasn’t a beauty, by any means, or brilliant either, or even good. No, she was drearily psychopathic and trying to sublimate her repressions, which, as you no doubt know, is a lot of claptrap and fundamentally impossible.

  ‘Never mind! Take Shirley for what she was, and no more. In this particular equation it doesn’t matter in the slightest. On the other side we’ll set another unbalanced personality, a man who has never advanced beyond a certain point of adolescence. X – we’ll call him X – probably had an unfortunate childhood, enough to set him dreaming compensatory dreams of greatness; it happens all the time, I know – it’s the standard pattern of adolescence; but now and then one finds a psyche that never gets beyond that phase.